SUZANNE COLLINS' hit trilogy pales in comparison with this burnished and brilliant coming-of-age story

Red Rising is the latest dystopian young adult fiction to appeal to Hunger Games fans [LIONSGATE]

It's all too easy to compare every futurist, fatalistic coming-of-age story under an oppressive regime to The Hunger Games.

Brown's blazing debut promises (and certainly delivers) all the associated thrills and spills but so much more.

He thrusts the concept full-throttle into the far future with a devastating starting point rooted in the betrayal of a whole people.

With alchemic skill he mixes in the savage splendour and political intricacies of Game Of Thrones and the gleaming visual beauty and excess of Blade Runner. The tale may be old but the telling of it is burnished and brilliant.

The subdued opening chapters take us into the world of the Reds, a subterranean mining community on Mars.

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Overseen by the god-like Golds they have laboured for countless generations in the poorest of conditions to source the terra-forming materials necessary to convert the unseen surface of the planet. Their sole comfort (and pride) is that they are the only hope for a dying, distant Earth.

Darrow is a Helldiver, the fiercest and bravest of them. Yet, like most, he never questions the brutal order, until a merciless succession of events rips his whole life away and shows him that nothing is what it seems.

His awakening is overwhelming, dazzling our imagination like the switch from black and white to colour in The Wizard Of Oz.

Darrow's realisation of the true nature of his people's enslavement and his transformation into a glittering, exquisite golden weapon of remorseless revenge is exhilarating.

This blazing debut is the multi-layered and mythic first part of a trilogy [PH]

We may be on Mars but in a virtuoso show of muscular prose and storytelling, Brown ushers in a high fantasy setting and classical Greek myths, as Darrow becomes that which he hates in order to destroy it.

But can he tell friend from foe or resist the greatest temptation of all... power?

This is not just a book for lovers of sci-fi or fantasy or young adult feisty heroes. It is simply a book that lets you dream while awake.

There may be a welcome melancholy counterpoint beneath the bombast but you'll find it hard to resist the tingling of your spine by the giddy, glorious end.

As this is the start of a trilogy the wait for the next book will be unbearable.